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Clean Technology Employment in Canada – new data from two Statistics Canada releases

A December 15 article in Energy Mix reported “More Canadians working in green jobs than in oil patch”; the National Observer wrote “ There are nearly 300,000 high-paying clean tech jobs in Canada”. Both articles were based on data released by Statistics Canada on December 13 from its new Environmental and Clean Technology Products Economic Account survey. Statistics Canada estimates that 274,000 jobs were attributable to environmental and clean technology activity in 2016, accounting for 1.5% of jobs in the Canadian economy. This represents a growth of 4.5% since 2007 – but at a time when employment in the economy as a whole grew 8.4%. The good news of the data shows higher than average annual labour compensation per job (including benefits) for environmental and clean technology jobs – $92,000, compared with an economy-wide average of $59,900. This is largely because of the inclusion of electricity and waste management – without those two sectors, the average compensation per job was $82,000.

Smaller employment numbers are reported by the Survey of Environmental Goods and Services (SEGS), most recently published on December 12, 2017, and providing data from 2015. Amongst the findings: “Ontario ($600 million) and Quebec ($247 million) businesses exported almost $850 million worth of environmental and clean technology goods and services in 2015. This accounted for 71.7% of all Canadian exports in this sector….. In 2015, about 11,000 people held environmental and clean technology positions in Ontario, while almost 4,000 people were employed in this sector in Quebec. Waste management services provided jobs for another 15,000 people in Ontario and 7,000 people in Quebec.” CANSIM Tables for the SEGS are here , including a table showing employment by region of Canada.

How to explain the differences? The Environmental and Clean Technology Products Economic Account includes clean energy, waste management, environmental and clean technology manufacturing industries, and technical services, which gives it a broader scope than the Survey of Environmental Goods and Services (SEGS), as explained here .